


Silver Over Gold

by lellabeth



Category: Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Author regrets nothing, Feelings, M/M, Olympics AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-17
Updated: 2016-08-17
Packaged: 2018-08-09 11:22:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7799854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lellabeth/pseuds/lellabeth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>hi. long time no see. thank you dearly for reading. <3</p>
    </blockquote>





	Silver Over Gold

**Author's Note:**

> hi. long time no see. thank you dearly for reading. <3

Phil Coulson was the Team USA poster boy.

He was on the TV all the time, it seemed, talking with quiet fire about the importance of sports for all people, no matter their background. Clint is living in a two-room trailer that houses eight then, and though Phil’s words were customary for any successful athlete hauled in front of cameras, the earnestness in his eyes was not. It seems like he is speaking just to Clint, a ‘ _hey, your background isn’t everything you’ll ever be, not even close’,_ and Clint tucks that message somewhere deep inside.

Clint grows up idolising Phil, the way he goes about his business with a smile and a straight back and more good than Clint had ever known a man to be before that. He follows Phil’s career through each World Championship and Olympic Games, even when he has to use his sparse funds to buy the cheapest beer in a bar so he can watch the races. Phil wins them all, even when he doesn’t come first - because that joy, that pride written all over his face whenever he crosses a finish line, it could never be losing. Clint watches medals of various shades hang around Phil’s neck, and yet Phil is more precious than any of them.

Clint supposes it’s weird, really, to be _this_  invested in someone he’s never met; but he feels like he does know Phil, like he has met him a million times over and dreamed of him even more. 

The first time he shoots a bow, he closes his eyes and imagines Phil’s face after the gold in Seoul, when Phil had a slice down his leg filled with debris and dust, tears filling his eyes, sweat soaking his hair, kissing his fingers before touching them to the USA badge on his chest.

There is a sharp recoil down his arm from the release, but his arrow strikes true.

After a while, he realizes his bow is a part of him - the best part.

Clint uses Phil as inspiration for his own achievement, through having to steal tape to wrap his fletching-torn fingertips to ignoring sneering faces of other athletes of meets. He remembers Phil’s smile after his final race, bracketed with tears, and Clint lets the ache of it fuel him on.

People frown when he turns up to events in sneakers with holes and ratty sweatpants. They talk behind their hands about his busted bow, splintering and battered. They raise eyebrows at the archery club he’s associated with, the one who let him register under their name as long as he competes in their group events.

Then he shoots arrow after arrow, thinking of the bronze in Barcelona, the two silvers in Atlanta, barely opening his eyes to see where his shots are hitting. Somehow, he knows.

The people in the stands, they’re silent after that.

When Clint makes the Olympic team (is pleaded with to join, really), he expects to feel like he did when he saw Phil win a race everyone said he’d lose. He doesn’t expect to sit in his motel room alone all night afterward, feeling like there’s still a piece of it all missing.

* * *

 

He travels to Rio alone.

He explores the city a little, but there is no one to share any of it with.

He trains with the others on the team, or he tries - they all walk away after the first time he pulls off a flawless round without stopping to adjust.

Clint has spent his life up to then feeling like a trapped nerve waiting to be put right, and getting everything he thought he wanted hasn’t fixed it a bit.

He wins each heat he is put through, and then he is at the final and he wins that too. He wears the flag. He thanks the crowd for their support. He wonders why none of it feels like anything at all.

At the medal ceremony, he does what he needs to - smiles, waves, poses. The medal around his neck is heavy.

When the representative steps up to hand him his memento, Clint feels butterflies in his stomach.

He is staring into eyes bluer than the cornflowers that grow back in Iowa.

“Congratulations. I was rooting for you the entire way. You should be so proud of how you represented your country,” Phil Coulson - _Phil Coulson_  - says in that soft, gentle way of his.

Clint _feels_  proud, all at once, and his eyes sting with genuine tears. He knows his own story is almost a fairytale: abandoned kid who clawed his way out of the murky backstreets to become the most recognizable archer of all time.

When the ceremony is done, Clint steps down from the podium and into the hallway back to the training center. Halfway there, he’s stopped by a touch to his shoulder. 

“Hey, you deserve a proper congratulations,” he hears right before he is tugged into the warmest, tightest hug of his life. Clint hugs back almost automatically, burrowing closer when he feels a large hand feather-light on the back of his head. “You really did it.”

Phil steps back from the hug after a few minutes. His cheeks are slightly pink. “I thought you could use a hug.”

Clint smiles shyly. “You were right.”

“So, any crazy celebrations planned?”

“The biggest steak room service can deliver me.” 

Phil gives an expression Clint has never seen him wear before, and it takes him a minute to realize the other man is frowning.

“Nothing else?”

Clint suddenly gets the realisation that Phil is implying there should be something else. He resists picking at the ragged skin of his fingertips. “Nothing else.”

“No party with friends or drinks with your partner or… or…” 

If Clint thought Phil was frowning before, he is definitely unhappy now.

The lump in Clint’s throat is too big to swallow. “No one to do it with.”

Something changes in Phil’s face then, confusion switching out to sadness.

“A guy like you, no one to spend your crowning moment with?” If it was said cruelly, Clint could just shrug it off. But Phil says it like it hurts him to do so, and Clint’s eyes prickle with tears again before he can bite his cheek to stop them. Phil sees and his face falls even further. He steps forward.

Clint feels the warmth of him like a lifeline.

“You could spend it with me, if you want.”

It’d sound like pity coming from anyone else, but Clint Barton can read Phil Coulson better than anyone else ever could. He knows every expression, and there is nothing but honest kindness there.

“I’d like that,” Clint says quietly, and Phil’s small smile feels like a scorecard full of perfect tens.

* * *

 

Four years later, in Tokyo, Clint takes the gold again. The weather is beautiful, the crowd electric, but nothing matches the pure glow of Phil’s smile from the stands, holding up his homemade pink banner in support of Clint. 

The medal is even heavier than the one from Rio and yet, Clint can’t help but compare it to the thin band of silver Phil had placed on the third finger of Clint’s left hand a year ago. He hears his husband’s sharp whistles pierce the air, sees Phil’s beaming face on the big screen in front of him and knows that no medal of any color will ever, ever come close to being better.


End file.
